to accept the world as it was, and hurried swiftly on to the little
schoolhouse. The children saw her coming, and ran to meet her and
escorted her triumphantly in at the door. Of their welcome she could be
sure. Thus she became again teacher of the lower school.

How the judge and Miss Lucretia got along that morning, Cynthia never
knew. Miss Lucretia spent the day in her old home, submitting to
hero-worship, and attended an evening party in her honor at Mr. Gamaliel
Ives's house--a mansion not so large as the first citizen's, though it
had two bay-windows and was not altogether unimposing. The first citizen,
needless to say, was not there, but the rest of the elite attended. Mr.
Ives will tell you all about the entertainment if you go to Brampton, but
the real reason Miss Lucretia consented to go was to please Lucy Baird,
who was Gamaliel's wife, and to chat with certain old friends whom she
had not seen. The next morning she called at the school to bid Cynthia
good-by, and to whisper something in her ear which made her very red
before all the scholars. She shook her head when Miss Lucretia said it,
for it had to do with an incident in the 29th chapter of Genesis.

While Jonathan Hill was being made a hero of in the little two-by-four
office of the feed store the morning after the mass meeting (though
nobody offered to take over his mortgage), Mr. Dodd was complaining to
his wife of shooting pains, and "callated" he would stay at home that
day.

"Shootin' fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Dodd. "Get along down to the store and
face the music, Levi Dodd. You'd have had shootin' pains if you'd a went
to the meetin'."

"I might stop by at Mr. Worthington's house and explain how powerless I
was--"

"For goodness' sake git out, Levi. I guess he knows how powerless you are
with your shootin' pains. If you only could forget Isaac D. Worthington
for three minutes, you wouldn't have 'em."

Mr. Dodd's two clerks saw him enter the store by the back door and he was
very much interested in the new ploughs which were piled up in crates
outside of it. Then he disappeared into his office and shut the door, and
supposedly became very much absorbed in book-keeping. If any one called,
he was out--any one. Plenty of people did call, but he was not
disturbed--until ten o'clock. Mr. Dodd had a very sensitive ear, and he
could often recognize a man by his step, and this man he recognized.

"Where's Mr. Dodd?" demanded the owner of the step,